Can't shut down my computer (Linux Mint 9)

[Mjolinor]

Be careful what you do with the computer if you just power off. Part of the shutdown process parks the HDD heads.

Now, things may of progressed since I last looked into it. But if the Bios doesn't park it then any sudden movement or knocks to the case could cause surface damage on the disks.

Not a worry as disks autopark and have done for a long time

[enigmas]

First of all there is no program 'ROOT', you can do:
sudo su - (and give your user current password)
su - (and give root password if you know any)
sync; sync; sync (this will force synchronization with your disks, so all the cached applications should write on disk)

Depends on what you are trying to do:
Reboot: # reboot
Power Off: # halt
# poweroff
to force the above use the switch -f but remember to issue the sync; sync; sync command

[Grummler]

Hi there,

i've got the exact same problem here, regular shutdown hans up showing non progressing progress dots. I've got two screens, one of Them (#1, DVI) turns off, the other one (#2VGA) stays on. Post and Boot sequence are shown on #2. The Reboot works fine however.

but i've tried several command line shutdowns, with different outcomings:

forced shutdown after sync as suggested by enigmas freezes the screens (none switched off) and turns HDD off, cant tell anything else, doesn't react to anything but the power or reset switch.

From the virtual console it exits to the dots again and i cant see anything. ->hit reset

I entered the console via recovery option and did the same there, and it finally froze while displaying something hopefully useful, im a linux newbee though, this doesn't tell me much, it looks like it should be working...

[enigmas]

You could bring the console during shutdown with CTRL+ALT+F1 and switch between consoles with F... keys (F1 or Alt+F1, at least on other distribution, you can try other F keys of combination on Alt+F keys to bring console).

On older systems there were some problems with the APM/ACPI which didn't powered off the system, and remained in HALT state, so see if you can catch the screens during shutdown, also you can try and see the messeges system log file:
/var/log/messages
or you can issue dmesg as root

you can try also to perform as root:
modprobe apm power_off=1
and try a shutdown and see if it works.

If not, probably you should use some kernel parameters to boot up the system, disabling ACPI and enabling power_off.

I also saw some 'bug' for gutsy version but is not isolated: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...22/+bug/119308

Some times unix/linux is not for beginners .